AI infrastructure is a hot commodity, as is the high bandwidth memory (HBM) on which it depends, driving up prices for the newfangled tech and for less glamourous memory and storage hardware.

The AI boom is great news for memory vendors manufacturing the highly coveted chips. According to IDC, Micron and Samsung saw their revenues rise 57.7 and 78.8 percent respectively in Q1, year over year, while SK hynix - one of the leading producers of HBM - saw its revenues boom more than 144 percent.

IDC also notes that the emerging AI PC and AI smartphone segments appear to be benefiting chipmakers, as devices running even modest AI models can require multiple gigabytes of storage and DRAM. To make AI performance pleasing to users, faster memory is often required, too.

"With the rising demand for AI in datacenters and the device market, memory is projected to remain an important driver for the development of the [integrated device manufacturing] IDM in the second half of 2024 (2H24)," the research firm wrote.

The bad news is it appears those looking to get their hands on a GPU-powered servers, or just a new PC, may have to pay more as a result.

IDC's findings reinforce earlier reports predicting higher memory prices. Back in December, Gartner estimated that global semiconductor revenues would grow 16.8 percent year-on-year in 2024 to $624 billion.

For much of 2023 an oversupply of memory depressed prices. Demand for AI-capable systems of all sorts led to predictions of a quick rebound in 2024. Gartner predicted a double-digit revenue expansion and, you guessed it, higher prices.

How much higher? According to the industry watchers at TrendForce, customers are already negotiating HBM supply for 2025, leading suppliers to preemptively raise prices by between five and ten percent. Doing so hasn’t deterred buyers: Micron and SK hynix have both revealed they're nearly sold out of their supply of HBM through 2024 and much of 2025.

Given limited supply, Nvidia has reportedly begun courting Samsung as an alternative source of HBM for its next-gen accelerators. Reuters reported on Wednesday that Sammy's eight-layer HBM3E had passed Nvidia's quality assurance tests for use in its GPUs - but it had not yet signed a supply deal.

Citing sources familiar with the matter, Reuters also reported that Samsung was working to qualify its more sophisticated 12-layer HBM for use in Nvidia's GPUs, but that it is yet to pass quality assurance tests.

However, it's not just DRAM and HBM that's seeing price hikes. If you've noticed that SSDs have been getting more expensive, you can blame AI for that, too. As we previously reported, NAND flash revenues jumped 28.1 percent to $14.71 billion during the first quarter of 2024 - driven in large part by demand for high-performance GPU servers.

According to TrendForce this has driven PC and smartphone vendors to fortify their inventories, thereby pushing up the average selling price of NAND flash. In the enterprise, datacenter SSD prices grew 15 percent on average. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/08/08/memory_prices_rising/